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It may be suggested that, while in the unities of the partial
order the essence and the unity are distinct, yet in collective
existence, in Real Being, they are identical, so that when we
have grasped Being we hold unity; Real Being would coincide with
Unity. Thus, taking the Intellectual-Principle as Essential
Being, that principle and the Unity Absolute would be at once
Primal Being and Pure Unity, purveying, accordingly, to the rest
of things something of Being and something, in proportion, of the
unity which is itself.
There is nothing with which the unity would be more plausibly
identified than with Being; either it is Being as a given man is
man or it will correspond to the Number which rules in the realm
of the particular; it will be a number applying to a certain
unique thing as the number two applies to others.
Now if Number is a thing among things, then clearly so this unity
must be; we would have to discover what thing of things it is. If
Number is not a thing but an operation of the mind moving out to
reckon, then the unity will not be a thing.
We found that anything losing unity loses its being; we are
therefore obliged to enquire whether the unity in particulars is
identical with the being, and unity absolute identical with
collective being.
Now the being of the particular is a manifold; unity cannot be a
manifold; there must therefore be a distinction between Being and
Unity. Thus a man is at once a reasoning living being and a total
of parts; his variety is held together by his unity; man
therefore and unity are different- man a thing of parts against
unity partless. Much more must Collective Being, as container of
all existence, be a manifold and therefore distinct from the
unity in which it is but participant.
Again, Collective Being contains life and intelligence- it is no
dead thing- and so, once more, is a manifold.
If Being is identical with Intellectual-Principle, even at that
it is a manifold; all the more so when count is taken of the
Ideal Forms in it; for the Idea, particular or collective, is,
after all, a numerable agglomeration whose unity is that of a
kosmos.
Above all, unity is The First: but Intellectual-Principle, Ideas
and Being, cannot be so; for any member of the realm of Forms is
an aggregation, a compound, and therefore- since components must
precede their compound- is a later.
Other considerations also go to show that the
Intellectual-Principle cannot be the First. Intellect must be
above the Intellectual Act: at least in its higher phase, that
not concerned with the outer universe, it must be intent upon its
Prior; its introversion is a conversion upon the Principle.
Considered as at once Thinker and Object of its Thought, it is
dual, not simplex, not The Unity: considered as looking beyond
itself, it must look to a better, to a prior: looking
simultaneously upon itself and upon its Transcendent, it is, once
more, not a First.
There is no other way of stating Intellectual-Principle than as
that which, holding itself in the presence of The Good and First
and looking towards That, is self-present also, self-knowing and
Knowing itself as All-Being: thus manifold, it is far from being
The Unity.
In sum: The Unity cannot be the total of beings, for so its
oneness is annulled; it cannot be the Intellectual-Principle, for
so it would be that total which the Intellectual-Principle is;
nor is it Being, for Being is the manifold of things.
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